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More times than not it is difficult to find a context to review an interesting work. Not so for Meenakshi Ahamed for she has an audience in thousands of Indians who are setting their sights, dreams and passions on America by way of a student visa or a H1B as well as the Indian American community already entrenched in every facet of their adopted land. This is what Ahamed’s work is all about — not just the travails of coming to a foreign land but ensuring the hard path has its rewards in the end. It was not a question of a silver platter waiting on arrival or manna from heaven. The Techies, Healers and Influencers who have been chosen for this carefully woven book will vouch to this.
“It’s amazing. Indian descent Americans are taking over the country… you guys are incredible,” President Joe Biden told Swati Mohan, the lead scientist at NASA in 2021. In 1970 when author Ahamed came to America there were about 51,000 Indians and in 2020 there were an estimated 4.4 million, many of whom were naturalised American citizens or born in that country; and over a period of time came to be a powerful voting bloc representing both the Democratic and Republican parties not to speak of being Members in the House of Representatives.
And at a time when some in the Grand Old Party were worried about a “curry” smell wafting through the corridors of the White House in the event of Kamala Harris elected President in 2024, there’s hardly a murmur of Usha Vance in the Vice Presidential mansion. But neither Kamala nor Usha are profiled in Ahamed’s work. Neither is Sundar Pichai. “Leaving people out was far more difficult than deciding who to put in,” Ahamed readily admits, making the point that the profiles are not meant to be a critical evaluation of the individual but an “opportunity for the reader to learn through a direct conversation with the subject how they charted their path to the top”.
Second largest immigrant group
In 2023, the Indians surpassed the Chinese as the second largest immigrant group after the Mexicans and the expectation is that by 2055 Asians will surpass the Hispanics as the largest immigrant group in the United States. But the phases were distinct says Ahamed pointing to the first wave that came to America in the 1960s; the second being a part of the “tech-stem” boom and the New Generation of folks either born in America or the ones who came at a very young age. But the individuals selected in each category had their own insights into a path of success, not necessarily smooth but with obstacles and hence a peek into their sources of strength.
The book Indian Genius paints a remarkable picture of individuals who had to fight through the conservative Indian culture. Chandrika Krishnamuthy — later Tandon -- speaks of the expectations of a girl child, the reluctance of elders to see her going to a co-educational institution like Madras Christian College. “I faced two problems. It (meaning MCC) was co-ed and an hour away. I had to go on hunger strike to overcome the families’ objections. My mother used to say that when you put fire and cotton together it’s combustible… It was all about preserving family honour”. But Chandrika had her way and in the process made it easier for her sister Indra (Nooyi) to enter the same institution. The strict culture did not stop with college… it included hanging around with friends who were boys!!
Challenges were not merely with colleges or friends or confined to the (then) Madras Sisters. Each path to America was difficult as it was challenging as the Reserve Bank of India for a very long time would wave no more than eight dollars as Exit allowance… Imagine landing in New York or anywhere with just eight bucks to show for. No small thanks to relatives or even clever airlines who, as Ahamed reveals, would overcharge the fare and return the balance in dollars to the needy student on arrival in America! Kanwal Rekhi seen as the Godfather of then Inventors and Founders grew up in a “crowded home without a running toilet”; an alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology without money, had to settle for Michigan Tech but made his way to Silicon Valley in 1971.
Indian Jugaad
Rekhi, an inventor and an entrepreneur, also had to face problems over his inter-racial marriage as his wife was white. But the likes of him and those of Suhas Patil, Sanjay Mehrotra and Vinod Dham were seen as the stars of the first generation of Indian engineers. Vinod Khosla, the billionaire venture capitalist and the Company Men consisting of Shantanu Narayen, Satya Nadella or Nikesh Arora made a huge impact and not just in the Silicon Valley. All of them are said to have possessed “Jugaad” or ingenuity.
Ahamed traces the varied roots of the Medicine Men like Deepak Chopra, Abraham Verghese, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Atul Gawande and Vivek Murthy. And the story of the Influencers be it Fareed Zakaria, Neal Katyal, Ro Khanna and Nikki Haley is quite impressive indeed given their varied backgrounds but bound by the chord of a determination to look past challenges and succeed in a nation of opportunities. Khanna, for instance, is already setting his sights on the Senate from the House of Representatives and Haley is already a presidential candidate from the Grand Old Party and displaying enough guts to stand up to what she believed for.
Ahamed may be faulted by some for being too selective in her group of individuals to portray the meteoric rise of Indians in America. And there will be those who will make the point that only the positives of Indians in their chosen land have been focused on and that there have been some who did not rise up to expectations or let down the community. But the book has to be seen in how even ordinary folks dared to dream of going to America and making it in spite of bigotry and racist sentiments out in full display. The men and women succeeded not because their cultures placed an accent to ignore the negatives; but in a confidence of their futures in America.
(The author is a senior journalist having been in Washington D.C. for 14 years covering North America and the United Nations; and in academics for more than a decade as Professor and Deputy Dean)
Check out the book on Amazon.
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